


Another Rite

by goldleaf1066



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Alien anatomy, One Shot, Other, Sexual Content, urRu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24476509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldleaf1066/pseuds/goldleaf1066
Summary: The Master and the Archer share a moment on the eve of yet another parting.
Relationships: urVa/urSu
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Another Rite

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, "Va/Su' was whispered in my ear and here we are.

It’s the largest cave, the Master’s; ample space for visitors, discussions and abstractions, tea. The Archer has been here less often than most but remembers to duck his head beneath the talismans dangling from the lintel, to shift his tail leftwards out of the way of the stacked scrolls all spiralling into one another and too near the door lest he scatter them across the rugs as he passes. 

“A latecomer,” the Master is saying as he rummages for the leaves in a box, “though no less welcome at this hour.”

The Archer un-shoulders his quiver and sets it by one of the stools. Between it and the second chair there is a low table, solid and close enough to the ground to avoid stooping any further. He remains standing and gets it out of the way.

“Do you love me less for my absence?”

It is a ritual, of a sort.

“I fear,” The Master says, turning, seating himself and offering him a cup, “that the lack of you stokes the joy on your return all the more.” He sighs, settling into himself like an old house settles into its foundation, limbs and joints and head filled to the brim with thought.

The Archer approaches, his gait singular but purposeful even in close quarters. He sits and takes the cup in two of his hands. The third he sets in his lap; the fourth clutches his bow, thumb rubbing against a smooth patch in the wood. Inside his cup swirls a tea that makes his nostrils ache with the lack of _that_. Scent so stitched to memory, the tang of the drink and the Master’s unwavering gaze linked so terribly and haunting him on cold nights away.

“Odd,” the Archer says, “that that joy strikes a strange note within me.” He opens his mouth again to elaborate, but catching the Master’s eye, finds he doesn’t need to. The Master knows him as well as he knows himself. 

They lap at their tea. Outside the stars are pricking the sky, and the wind rattles the hanging charms and rustles the scrolls where its fingers seep into through the opening. The Master will close the door in a moment, unfasten his coat and hang it over the end of his sleeping frame. There is nowhere for the Archer to hang his, so he keeps it on.

“Sleep,” the Master is saying, clambering into bed, “is becoming a luxury for you.”

The Archer nods. Too many nights he has lain by his dying fire and watched the stars cycle overhead. No pillow or ready embrace for the wandering Mystics, and the Archer least of all.

Nothing the Master says in these moments of pre-intimacy is much other than a gentle scolding, a reminder that he would be better off here, and not not here. The Valley on the whole; of late this cave, this bed in particular.

“You worry too much for me,” the Archer says, going to him, kneeling on the floor beside the sleeping-frame, resting his head on the Master’s hand. This is a ritual too.

“Not you alone.”

“Not I alone, no, but too much for me.”

The Master’s fingers push the hair from his eyes, skate down over his brow and the jut of his cheekbone to cup his jaw, angle his head so that their gazes meet.

“UrVa,” he says, and the word is laden with all the innumerable layers of longing that the Archer has come to recognise mirrored in his own heart.

“I’m not the only one who wanders,” the Archer says, picking at the point.

“Do I not ache for the others?” A sigh like the sigh of the ocean as it ends its embrace of the shore. “You are the only one who comes _back_.”

“Do I not ache for you?” The Archer asks.

“Do you?”

He regards the Master, lying on his side in his bed, head pointing toward him and the rest of him a collection of limbs and sleeves, lolling tail and dangling feet. His eyes are sunken behind his worries, his hair loose and at odds with his serene bearing. The Archer lifts himself up, leaning on the sleeping-frame with two hands as the Master turns onto his back beneath him, their noses meeting somewhere halfway. He rubs his head along the length of the Master’s until he is breathing in his hair, face pressed against his throat. The Master’s breath catches.

“Tell me you want this not because of… who I am.”

“Not because you are the Master,” urVa says, eyes closed tight and fingers making a soft scramble to get inside his clothes. “You are only urSu.”

“UrSu,” he repeats, a pale word, a breath whistling from him. He is under urVa’s weight, hands finding their ways onto his body over his clothing, creeping around a hip and under his covered tail. UrVa’s teeth make a shallow imprint on an exposed shoulder, then his long head is angling under urSu’s again, his gasps and unfettered breath vibrating against his cheek.

(UrVa has never been quite sure the frame would take both of them, he keeps his tail and one foot on the ground, just in case.)

The back of one of urSu’s hands is running along the inside of his thigh, the muscle tensed, powerful, shuddering with the effort of holding himself up one-legged and from _this_ , this ethereal progression over time from not being looked at in the eye to being touched, _touched_ by _him_ without a cowed head or too much forgiveness sought after.

He’s not quite _bold_ , but it’s getting there.

UrVa lowers his head and paints a hot stripe against the underside of urSu’s jaw with his tongue. The hand against his thigh stills, tenses, turns and clasps the muscle. With his hind hands and without looking urVa pushes urSu’s knees further apart; he’s lying there beneath him with legs akimbo and his gaze is pinned on everything urVa is doing, watching every knot untied, every buckle unhitched, all laces un-threaded; out of clothes, out, out! His own dream-coat urVa drapes over urSu’s; they hang there together, jostling with every shifting limb, every shuffle further together.

It would have been easier to undress beforehand. Easier to stay, easier to leave. Easier to just say the words.

UrSu lifts an arm toward him, hand curling around a hank of hair, a gentle tug, there, and there again. UrVa twists his head and begins nosing along his delicate skin, the crook of urSu’s elbow soft as a petal against his mouth.

Shutting the door is a token act; no-one will disturb them. Everyone _knows_.

UrSu is lying in the ruin of his clothing, though nothing is really torn, only pulled apart, undone as urSu is undone with his hands wavering in mid-air seeking urVa, sliding over the crenulations of his ribs and the softness of his belly. UrVa knows it will come, the clutching, desperate cleaving to him, the hauling closer; it happens every time as if urSu is surprised anew at that alien sensation, that most delicious pressure as urVa, face still against urSu’s, guides with a hand the dual arcs of his erections and presses both of them inside him. It’s not difficult; he’s soaking.

UrSu murmurs into his ear, little parcels of voice and breath and no real words.

UrVa’s foot is sliding against the floor as he grinds but it’s barely about rhythm. Just… being one another for a moment, so stitched together one couldn’t apportion whose arms to whom, or decide down whose tail the shudder rolls from root to twitching tip, whose tongue is wavering around whose name before slipping against a seeking mouth, whose voice cries out, and cracks, and falls silent in the suck of breath, soft and as constant as the shallow frothing tide. 

The sleeping frame seems content to cradle them both; they are insensible, boneless, poured into the shape of one another, their strange, spent bodies slumping together with their legs a tangle, the pulse of their climax ebbing slowly into another moment they, muddled in their differing outlooks, won’t talk about.

He will leave soon, urVa thinks, even as he buries himself into urSu, is knotted into a welter of arms and finds a place for his head against the rise and fall of his chest. Soon, he tells himself, as his tail winds around another, still stomach to stomach and groin to groin with urSu who is beginning to snore quietly. Wait until he is asleep and slip away.

One day, the Archer thinks, it could be impossible.


End file.
